Vuuch, creator of the first enterprise social system (ESS) for manufacturers, announced the availability of Vuuch™ 3.0. It is social software for product development teams that enables a team to work together in new ways using familiar CAD and desktop tools. The product also leverages legacy enterprise applications such as PLM, ERP, and CRM, giving manufacturers a new way to drive cost out of product development. With Vuuch, people from every part of the enterprise, including vendors and suppliers, can participate in the product development process.
A new Vuuch “product” page type has been introduced into the ESS. Vuuch product pages use BOMs to make the product development project visible to many more users than was previously possible. Vuuch product pages contain a hierarchy of other Vuuch pages, each of which manages status, development discussions, issues, and tasks. With the introduction of product pages, Vuuch enables teamwork across the enterprise via a design-intent-based BOM. This new kind of BOM contains the accumulated deliverables, discussion, and decisions relating to the product, not just part and assembly hierarchies. For example, with product pages, purchasing can flag and manage cost issues with specific parts or suppliers. Engineering can work with manufacturing on production issues. Vendors and suppliers will have real-time awareness of issues, leading to faster resolution. Vuuch product pages also retain all the advantages of regular Vuuch pages, including the ability to be related to other pages and dynamic access control.
Every product development team has at least one Excel spreadsheet that the team uses to manage the development process. These project status files track all the issues preventing the release of the product. However, the list of items in these files is immediately outdated once the project review meeting is over. Vuuch 3.0 offers direct import of these project tracking spreadsheets into the ESS. When project tracking spreadsheets are imported, Vuuch automatically creates Vuuch pages for each item being tracked. Once imported, development issues, tasks, and discussions can be dynamically updated using Vuuch directly from the user’s preferred environment, be it the web, a CAD tool or a Microsoft Office® application. Now, using the software, the team has real-time awareness of everything going on with the product. With this latest version, project teams can begin using the product right away, even in the middle of a product development cycle, eliminating a barrier to adoption and delivering the benefits of the software social product development sooner.
The new product delivers user-interface improvements that collectively make the ESS more inviting and visually appealing. On the web, Vuuch now offers a new home page that allows users to rapidly create new pages and activities. A “Pages & Activities” tab organizes all the Vuuch pages you are working on. Web users can now mark an activity as a personal priority, promoting it to a position of higher visibility. For Vuuch pages which track a CAD file, an image of the CAD part or assembly is automatically included on the Vuuch page, enabling users to immediately understand what part or assembly is being tracked. In the Microsoft Office add-in, Vuuch terminology has been revised to match the terms used on in the web UI, making it seamless for users to switch between the two.
Vuuch is available as an annual subscription. Users who create Vuuch pages require a paid license. Anyone can access those pages and update those pages without a paid license. With the launch of Vuuch 3.0, the company is offering special introductory pricing of $250 per year per Vuuch page creation license.
Vuuch 3.0 is delivered as a service, so there is nothing for enterprises to install to begin using Vuuch. The Vuuch 3.0 web UI supports major browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer®, Mozilla Firefox® and Google® Chrome®. Optional Vuuch add-ins allow team members to access the ESS directly from within Microsoft Office 2007, SolidWorks®, Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Autodesk Inventor® and Pro/ENGINEER®.
Vuuch
www.vuuch.com
::Design World::
Source: :: Design World ::
